https://www.military.com/daily...find-new-airmen.html

The Air Force will allow recruits to have a greater percentage of body fat in an effort to reach more Americans as the service expects to fall short of its recruiting goals this year.

Male recruits are now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%, Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday. That's up from the previous requirement of 20% for men and 28% for women.

The change comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans are overweight, with that weight serving to bar many from service. The obesity epidemic, along with criminal histories for young Americans often tied to drug usage, means that only about 30% of young people are eligible to serve, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While recruits will be allowed to join with greater body fat percentages, they will still be expected to meet the same fitness standards as everyone else to stay in the service, Brown stressed. That means meeting the waist-to-height ratio requirement the Air Force announced in January and implemented this month.

"I can't stress enough: We are not lowering our standards, but rather we are aligning our standards with the overall DoD policy," Brown added in an email, citing a Defense Department instruction on fitness and body composition programs released last year.

The change in body fat standards for recruits is the latest effort to open up avenues to serve or to provide more incentives to attract recruits as all branches of the military struggle to meet their recruitment goals.

While the Air Force last year met its active-duty recruiting goal, it had to dip into its pool of delayed-entry applicants and so started this year at a deficit. This year, the service expects to miss its active-duty recruiting goal by 10%, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last month.

The Army last year started approaching the obesity problem facing recruiting by offering pre-boot camp physical fitness classes to potential recruits who do not meet weight standards, a program officials have touted as a success. The Navy recently followed suit by offering its own physical fitness prep course to potential recruits who don't meet weight standards.

The Air Force expects its new increased body fat limits to allow 50 to 100 more recruits to join the service per month, though Brown added that estimate is based partially on anecdotal evidence.

For recruits who come in on the high end of the body fat standard, the Air Force's "medical community will ensure education and resources are in place to help these airmen reach a lower [body fat percentage] and meet the [body composition program] standard," Brown said.

The change in body fat standards for recruits stems from a team the Air Force announced last month that is looking into how the service can update recruitment policies. The team is led by Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin.

The Air Force has already made several changes to widen the pool of recruits, including allowing hand and neck tattoos and launching a pilot program for recruits who test positive for THC to retest.

The service is also trying to entice more people into joining by offering new incentives such as up to $65,000 in student loan debt repayment.



A New Medal and Revised Marketing Tactics Part of Army's Fight Against Recruiting Slump

https://www.military.com/daily...ecruiting-slump.html

The Army is putting the finishing touches on a new ribbon to be awarded to soldiers who help convince someone to join the service, three sources with direct knowledge of the plans told Military.com.

It's unclear when the medal will start to be awarded. Army officials and recruiters interviewed by Military.com say there is no silver bullet to the recruiting slump the service saw last year, when it came up 15,000 active-duty soldiers short of its goal of bringing in 60,000 new recruits. The Army National Guard is in even deeper trouble.

Despite failing to hit its target last year, the Army has increased its goal this year, with senior leaders aiming to recruit 65,000 new full-time soldiers while scrambling to come up with new strategies to boost numbers.

Read Next: More Than a Dozen Special Operations Soldiers at Center of Drug Trafficking Probe

Right now, the service doesn't have any easy answers on how it can change the recent trajectory and attract new recruits. The upcoming medal is part of a broader initiative to get current soldiers to "tell the Army story," a talking point often repeated by senior leaders in the hopes that the current rank and file showing off the positive elements of service to friends and family could push applicants into recruiting offices.

The Army has also been emphasizing its streaming advertising to reach a younger demographic. Last year, the service spent at least $104 million on advertising, half of that going to digital advertising on platforms like YouTube, Hulu and Peacock, as well as audio streaming such as Spotify, according to internal service data reviewed by Military.com. In the same year, roughly $25 million was spent on online search, such as Google ads. Traditional TV, including Adult Swim, A&E and BET, saw about $16.6 million in ad buys. Social media is where the Army spent the least amount of money, with slightly more than $8 million.

The Army is set to launch a new ad campaign in March, bringing back the classic "Be All You Can Be" slogan, but the new ads will ditch the old jingle heard in commercials in the 1990s. The focus of that campaign will be trying to convince Gen Z that military service doesn't hold them back in life -- the idea being someone could potentially serve a short period of time and get out with benefits like the GI Bill and a generous home loan or have a career for life.

"Service in the Army is not actually a limiter, it's not going to hold you back from your hopes, dreams, plans," Col. John Horning, director of marketing strategy for the Army Enterprise Marketing Office, told Military.com in an interview. "[Service] may, in fact, for many people, put hopes, dreams and plans on a little nitrous boost. Once you're out, you're out. But, you know, whether it's a single term, that's not really all that long, considering the developmental opportunity to get in there. And then what you take into your career choices afterward."

For Army leadership, the overarching plan comes down to making sure the broader message of an inclusive branch that provides a leg up reaches as many Americans as possible.

"We need to tell the Army's story in new ways to ensure we remain the first choice for Americans who want to serve their country," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement to the force last year. "We need to reach out to Americans from all backgrounds, talents, and geographies and give them multiple reasons to come in and stay in our great Army. My goal is to help all Americans to be able to see themselves in what the Army has to offer."

But that message, delivered in February and repeated throughout much of the past year, did not appear to meaningfully combat the Army's recruiting woes.

Recruiting issues are a culmination of problems including several largely out of the Army's control -- mostly an obesity crisis and low academic performance among young Americans disqualifying them from service. One senior service leader told Military.com that some of the problem is simply attributed to America being in a pseudo peacetime with no war spurring a call to arms.

Army planners are trying just about anything, such as rapidly expanding pre-basic training courses for recruits who are slightly too overweight or who came up short on SAT-style entrance exams to qualify for enlistment. That effort has shown early promise, and senior service leaders including Gen. James McConville, the Army's top officer, have been cheerleading the program in public and behind the scenes.

The Army has also implemented a handful of new recruiting incentives, most notably allowing recruits to pick their first duty station, within limits -- the top pick being Alaska. Last year also saw record-high recruiting bonuses reaching $50,000. But it's unclear whether those incentives bring any talent to recruiters or if they just sweeten the deal for those already interested in signing up.

The service still needs to find a way to attract new recruits. And Army Recruiting Command, which shoulders much of that responsibility, has been slow to publicize any specific plans. That command got new leadership in October when Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis took over, becoming responsible for some 10,000 recruiters spread across 1,400 locations.

"Last year was tough and we expect this year to be just as challenging, but the Army understands the importance of our mission and is fully behind Recruiting Command," Davis said in a statement to Military.com. "They're ALL IN and committed to providing our team with the support needed to tackle this mission. I recently emailed a survey to every person in the command. I received over 44,000 responses from the Soldiers, Recruiters, and civilians. Using this information, I identified a number of areas where I needed to focus my attention: quality of life, talent management, and training. We are listening to our Recruiting Professionals because it is all about the people."

All of the services are facing the broader demographic headwinds that Army officials have pointed to as greatly complicating their efforts to recruit. The Coast Guard has been struggling with recruiting for years, falling short on its recruiting goals by an average of 20% since 2019.

However, most of the other services have fared comparatively much better. The Air Force hit its recruiting goals last year following a wide range of new bonuses. The Space Force is so small, as it's in its infancy, that its leadership hasn't faced any major recruiting challenges as it slowly expands. The Marine Corps barely hit its recruiting target after an uphill battle, but is significantly smaller than most other services.

Like the Army, the Navy is leaning on its current members to bring in new ones, launching a program in late December. The "Every Sailor is a Recruiter" initiative encourages sailors to submit contact information for friends and family who they "believe [are] a good fit for our Navy."

Sailors are promised a "Flag Letter of Commendation" -- not a medal but a letter from an admiral -- for every successful contract. The letters are still worth points toward advancement, and sailors are capped at a maximum of two.

The program matches a shift in how leaders in the sea service think about recruitment. Adm. Michael Gilday, the service's top officer, told an auditorium at the annual Surface Navy Association conference held in Arlington, Virginia, that the Navy is looking to encourage recruits to join by first convincing important people in their life.

Gilday explained that the Navy is looking to get back to advertising on televisions and other legacy media because that's where "mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, teachers, school administrators" -- people who influence young people to enlist -- still get their content.

"All of you either are serving or have served," Gilday said to the auditorium of largely senior and retired officers. "Share that enthusiasm with people; it's probably more helpful than you think."

Cmdr. Dave Benham, a spokesperson for Navy Recruiting Command, explained that the sea service sees programs like the sailor recruiting initiative as a way to increase interest in the Navy. Then, other initiatives announced over the past year aim to break down barriers that a recruit would encounter later in the journey.

The Navy's historically high bonuses, the now-widest enlistment age range, and lowered entrance test standards are an effort to remain competitive against other services, Benham explained.

The service has found in its research of 17- to 24-year-olds -- a key recruiting demographic -- that "one of the things that clearly comes through is that that generation values organizations that embrace and … not just give lip service to but model, diversity, equity and inclusion," Benham said. "That goes right into line with Navy core values and our desire to ensure that we're casting as wide a net as possible."

Complicating the services' efforts to market themselves to Gen Z have been the growing limitations on their use of a key platform. TikTok has roughly 50 million to 80 million active users in the U.S., effectively making it the dominant source for news and entertainment for Gen Z.

Yet President Joe Biden banned the popular Chinese app from use on government phones, out of mounting cybersecurity concerns. In recent weeks, roughly two dozen states have followed suit, banning TikTok from government devices. Some senior Army officials who spoke to Military.com on the matter understood the risks of Chinese spying but are also concerned over whether the ban could severely impact the service's ability to connect with young Americans.

Officials have publicly said that they will find other avenues to reach those same potential recruits.

"That type of content is very popular. There are other platforms that can do short-form video like YouTube and Instagram," Horning said. "How we reach them is a mix."

quote:

now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%

Those are some bigguns

So the Air Force is growing, just not the way we would assume they intended to.

Our culture has gone so sideways.

There is a reason they call it the Chair Force.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
There is a reason they call it the Chair Force.

All branches are doing it. Navy is no longer separating Sailors after two consecutive failed PRTs.

They give medals for any dumb excuse these days. You see guys with only a few years service with a chest full of BS medals. The services have gone to hell.

I’ll still give them respect for making the choice to serve…

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Male recruits are now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%, Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday. That's up from the previous requirement of 20% for men and 28% for women.

26% and 36%! Holy carp!

I was at 23% when I began my fat loss program in November and felt (and looked, IMO) like a shapeless sack then. I cannot imagine 26%, much less 36%. (Yes, I know women tend to retain more BF, overall, and carry it differently than men. But, still: Over one third body fat?!?!)

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
While recruits will be allowed to join with greater body fat percentages, they will still be expected to meet the same fitness standards as everyone else to stay in the service, ...

Yeah, GFL with that Kids that have had little-to-no nutritional or exercise discipline for their entire lives are suddenly going to turn that around to stay in the Air Force?

I don't think so, Tim.

More likely they'll find they'll have to relax the standards again, to keep the people for whom they relaxed them in the first place.

The fat-ifying of America continues apace

https://www.airforcetimes.com/...ity-forces-shortage/

Top Air Force recruiter predicts maintainer, security forces shortage

By Rachel S. Cohen
Apr 7, 12:23 PM

Air Force recruiters have made gains in new enlistments over the past few months, but the service still projects it will fall thousands of airmen short in critical units next year.

To build on its recent gains, the Air Force’s recruiting branch is launching a concerted push through the summer to bring in as many new airmen as possible.

“We’re currently down 900 maintainers that will not show up for shift change tonight on the flight line,” Chief Master Sgt. W. Frank Rawls, the Recruiting Service’s operations superintendent, wrote in an organization-wide email on Wednesday. “Unless we stop the bleeding, 700 defenders, who are badly needed to keep watch over our missile fields and checkpoints, won’t be there come [Sept. 30].”

That gap is expected to grow to 1,800 active duty maintainers by the end of the fiscal year, plus shortages of 300 airmen who handle munitions, 100 who fuel aircraft, and more, Air Force recruiting boss Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas wrote in his own email to rank-and-file recruiters on Tuesday.

“Airmen will almost certainly be asked to work longer hours, cover more shifts and make sacrifices in their personal lives to meet the mission demands essential to our national security,” he wrote. “The nation is depending on us.”

The emails first appeared on the unofficial “Air Force amn/nco/snco” Facebook page on Thursday. Recruiting spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed their authenticity Friday.

Finding Americans who are interested in and qualified to enlist has grown increasingly challenging in recent years. As of the end of March, the midpoint of fiscal 2023, the Air Force was less than halfway to its goal — bringing in around 11,200 of the 26,877 active duty enlistees it wants.

Just 1 in 30 people who show interest through the Air Force's website, or at an event like an airshow, end up applying to join.

It expects to miss that target by around 4,100 people, personnel chief Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller told lawmakers March 29. The Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve are also on track to fall short of their staffing requirements by about 4,600 and 3,600 airmen, respectively.

The Pentagon is broadly struggling with recruitment because of a complex web of economic and health factors, dwindling interest in military service, and the introduction of a new electronic health records system that has significantly slowed the process of bringing in new people.

The Air Force’s smaller-than-usual bench of recruits was shrinking at the beginning of fiscal 2022, as people entered the service without more to follow. Recruiters have begun to reverse that trend so that the Delayed Entry Program, the service’s name for its backlog of incoming recruits, is growing.

Nearly 6,000 newcomers are currently waiting to ship out to boot camp, Brown said Friday.

Rawls noted that more applicants had passed through Military Entrance Processing Stations during the week of March 27 than at any time since September 2019.

“The past three weeks have netted positive [Delayed Entry Program] gains, a streak our active duty component hasn’t seen since 2020,” he added. “These are much-needed wins and, together, winning will become habitual.”

Thomas indicated the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve are also faring better than they were last fall. Air Force Reserve Command said Monday it would offer qualified airmen a $10,000 incentive bonus if they agree to join the Reserve for at least three years upon separating from active duty.

“We are slowly and decidedly building momentum through concerted effort, training in the field and advocacy for resources and policy changes at our highest levels of leadership,” Thomas wrote.

A medal for referring a friend??? Will it look like any of these?

quote:

We are not lowering our standards

Bullshit.

Not sure the services have gotten the memo yet, but apparently there's no skeletal difference in men and womenz. And, womenz can do anything a man can do, right? So why give them a 10% free bump? Do the Bud Light guys (the ones who identify as chicks) get the 36% number, or will the services discriminate against their manginas and make them stick to the joystick-they-were-assigned numbers??

Think they will take a 39 year old wannabe pilot?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have seen them waive age requirements for certain positions.

quote:

quote:
We are not lowering our standards
Bullshit.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Russians did with the Wagner group and taking convicts. That was a disaster,

And, of course, throw in

“The service has found in its research of 17- to 24-year-olds -- a key recruiting demographic -- that "one of the things that clearly comes through is that that generation values organizations that embrace and … not just give lip service to but model, diversity, equity and inclusion," Benham said. "That goes right into line with Navy core values and our desire to ensure that we're casting as wide a net as possible."

Fat and woke - no doubt a winning combination

Also probably not true. My son went through Parris Island last year. I have met and talked to his platoon mates and buddies. For the most part they do not give a shit about DEI. Or ESG scores. Or any of that. At all.

I am a retired AF officer (active duty during Vietnam War Era and reservist in the late 70s until retirement in 1997). In my opinion, based on what I read, the AF has been on a steady decline since the late 1990s, so not surprised that standards have fallen as well. I remember seeing obviously overweight uniformed AF personnel at Andrews AFB during the 1990s. If the entry standards are dropped, imagine what the active force will look like a few years down the road. Thus, the BMI change is disturbing. I am 74 and have a BMI of under 24 (which I wish was even lower), so am puzzled why young recruits cannot meet what used to be a reachable standard.

quote:

Originally posted by uvahawk:
... so am puzzled why young recruits cannot meet what used to be a reachable standard.

That's easy: Lack of meaningful physical activity and a piss-poor diet.

When I was in school and ate at the cafeteria, pizza was a once-a-week (maybe once-a-month, not certain) event. Soda pop, candy bars, etc. were simply not available. Period. Portion sizes served were reasonable.

When I was in school, very few kids got rides or rode school buses. (I walked or bicycled to and from school [all my schools were roughly one mile from home] the entire time.)

Phys Ed was a required course. When there was recess, we went out and played with the other children.

When we weren't in school we were almost invariably outside playing with the other children in the neighborhood.

My mother cooked home-made meals from real ingredients. And you damn well ate what was placed in front of you or sat there until you did. Things like McDonald's didn't appear until I was well into high school and trips to such places were a rare treat.

Flip all that upside-down, which is what happens today. There's your answer.

And the AF thinks they're gonna fix that

When I was in the AF, If you were found to be overweight, you were put on a mandatory weight loss program widely referred to as the "fat boy program". You were given X number of months to drop the weight. If you did not, you were discharged.
The VN war was winding down but the drinking was still in full swing. My barracks had a beer machine. 25 cents for a can. They were finally removed when the weight and drinking became a real problem.